


taking care without caring is a lost cause

by rubystan (mamawerewolf)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, F/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, pining!ruby, technically still canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 22:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13222578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamawerewolf/pseuds/rubystan
Summary: Maybe it’s something about the new body, maybe it’s because every single centimeter of Sam is filled with burning rage, maybe it’s the isolation from the world other than gas station attendants, motel staff, and the survivors they drop off at the hospital when they successfully save someone from possession, but the amount of absolutely gnarly angry sex Sam and Ruby have been having lately is starting to actually get old.





	taking care without caring is a lost cause

**Author's Note:**

> samruby one-shot set sometime before s4. i will die on my samruby hill bc i love pain i guess.

Maybe it’s something about the new body, maybe it’s because every single centimeter of Sam is filled with burning rage, maybe it’s the isolation from the world other than gas station attendants, motel staff, and the survivors they drop off at the hospital when they successfully save someone from possession, but the amount of absolutely gnarly angry sex Sam and Ruby have been having lately is starting to actually get old.

She never thought she’d say something like that ever in her life, but here she is.

Jesus. Or demon Jesus. Whatever, she’s sort of taking his name in vain so she’s cool.

“Sam,” Ruby says as Sam sucks on her neck, wrapping her legs around his waist. “Sam,” she repeats, a little impatient. “Sam!”

He pulls away, panting, mouth red and moist. “What?” He grunts. And he looks good. He does. He feels nice and warm and thick, but Ruby has had sex four times this week and its Wednesday. And it’s always the same, and it doesn’t actually seem to be helping Sam focus.

“As fun as this is,” she says, playing with the open buttons of the fake button-neckline of his shirt, trying to think of how to say this delicately, because humans are delicate, with feelings, “I feel like we need to… slow down.”

Sam frowns. “What?”

Ruby chews on the inside of her lip. “I mean, you may be a healthy dude with an incredible, and I can’t stress this enough, an  _incredible_  cock, but you’re gonna wear yourself out. We’re not teenagers.”

“I’m twenty-five.”

“I’m not saying you’re an old man, Sam, relax.”

Sam “Oh”s softly, backing up, withdrawing. “Sorry, I, uh, I didn’t realize—“

“Sam.  _Chill_. I’m just looking out for you.” Mostly. “If you were pushing your luck, you’d know it. Immediately.”

This seems to work, mostly. Sam runs a hand through his hair and walks over to the queen bed, springs creaking as he sets down on the dusty, horrid orange-patterned duvet. The angst has bled out of his back and his brow is only a little furrowed. Ruby considers it a win.

“I’m gonna order take-out. You want Thai or Chinese or subs?”

Sam gives a noncommittal shrug. Ruby orders Chinese, doubling her own order. It’s easier than plying answers out of Sam. He’s a lot less talkative since Dean went down under.

 

Ruby stays at Sam’s hotel room or goes out to find some scumbag to use as demon bait most nights. Tonight’s the former. The town they’re staying in is too small to risk someone going missing if something goes sideways. So she’s stuck in a tiny ass room with a relatively large man who’s lost interest in everything but revenge and sex. She almost regrets taking sex off the table.

Almost.

“Sam.”

“Hmm?”

“Normally, I’d admire your commitment to the cause, but this is depressing. You need to do other things. Your brain will rot.”

Sam rolls his head to side-eye her. “It won’t.”

She lays down on her side, resting her face on her hands. “Dude. It will. I’ve been doing research—“

“If by research you mean watching the medical channel for four hours, I don’t think that counts.”

Ruby huffs. “Okay, first, it was two hours, because there was  _nothing_  else on, and two, that doesn’t mean I’m less right. When I said you need to chill and recharge, I didn’t just mean physically. Just because you aren’t actively picking fights you can’t win doesn’t mean you’re good, okay? And to get Lilith, you gotta be ready. Sometimes, being ready means finding a fucking hobby to do in your downtime.”

Sam sighs. After a moment, he stretches, and rolls onto his left side so his back is to her.

“ _Sam_.”

“I’ll think about it. Later.”

Ruby glares at the back of his big dumb head. She’d go out and do something her damn self, except this dumb town they’ve tucked themselves into doesn’t have a bar anymore. Apparently, the last one burned down a year ago, and they’re too poor to build it back up.

“I hate this stupid podunk town,” she grumbles.

Sam doesn’t laugh. It’s more of a huff of air. Ruby refuses to let it feel like a victory.

 

Ruby never needed to drive before, but Sam is only human, and sometimes he busts himself up or gets drunk or tired and needs to rest. So, as it is her primary mission to get him shaped up and keep him alive, she decides it’s time to learn.

“Seriously? You wanna learn to drive?”

Ruby shrugs. “It’s best if we’re prepared for anything. I’m not powerful enough to zap us anywhere, and you’ve got a hard-on for getting beat up. Someone needs to get us from point A to point B.”

Sam shrugs in a way that isn’t a shrug. If he were better, she thinks he’d laugh at her. She would hit him in the shoulder and tell him to shut up.

Instead, he tosses her the keys and teaches her how to drive a stick shift.

It’s awful. It’s frustrating. Ruby’s ears bleed with the sound of the gears grinding as she drops out of gear and the engine dies. The car they stole is a random yellow sedan with half the paint on the driver’s side door chipped off and rust around the tire rims. The plastic interior is peeling and the car reeks of cigarettes and man sweat and dust. If she were human, she thinks she’d choke on it.

(Regardless of Sam sitting there calmly, patiently, waiting out her many, many false starts until she drives three whole blocks without the engine shuddering to a halt.)

“You don’t have to—“

“No. Sam, it’s—I have to make sure I can look after you.” Ruby glares at the steering wheel. “This stupid human contraption is not going to get the best of me. It just might… take a little longer than I thought it would.”

A week later, after they’d driven to whatever place they thought might be swimming enough with scumbags that they could feasibly kidnap and stuff a demon in long enough to see if Sam could rip it back out (because Ruby heard Sam crying in the shower after a little girl in a pink dress bled out in his arms after they found a demon in Cincinnati, and it wasn’t his fault, he didn’t put it in there, but she still died in his arms and Sam had nightmares for a week and it was just easier this way), Ruby parks outside of a Mom-and-Pop diner.

“Nice job,” Sam says, smiling ever so slightly at her.

Ruby rolls her eyes. “I’m still in the car, but even I know it’s crooked as hell.”

But the car engine was off and she didn’t care enough about the car or the people who might want to park next to her, so she gets out of the car and tucks the keys into Sam’s jacket pocket.

The restaurant is as busy as a diner in a town this size ever gets. Fortunately, there seems to be at least two diners or other such watering holes in this particular town, because Sam and Ruby snag a booth with no trouble. It hasn’t been wiped down yet, but Ruby’s literally been in hell, and Sam’s slept in worse, so they brush the crumbs off and dry up the rings of condensation left by the previous customers.

“You drove for twenty minutes.” Sam doesn’t mean to play footsies with her, but he’s just so Goddamn tall that no matter where she puts her feet, she feels his shins banging against her toes. “You didn’t let the engine stall.”

Ruby gets a sugar packet out of the little porcelain container and sets on the table, patting the sugar inside flat. “I resent the implication that I ever  _let_  the damn thing stall. Why can’t you steal an automatic next time?”

Sam doesn’t even look around nervously. He just leans back, the red plastic squeaking. “Once you know how to drive stick—“

“I’ll know how to drive anything. Yeah, you said. Still, stick sucks.”

Sam fiddles with his sleeve. “The Impala’s a stick.”

Ruby sighs. “Fine. But we’re picking the thing up from the garage in, say, another week? It needs a good working over still. Until then, I want an automatic.”

Sam’s response is cut off by the approach of a waitress. A white woman, probably in her mid-fifties, with uneven mascara and sticky pink lipstick smiles at them. “Hi, you two,” she says, her tongue coated in fake sugar. “Can I start you off with a drink?”

Sam orders a coffee, and Ruby doubles it. Ruby doesn’t have a drink preference. She doesn’t even really need to eat, but it looks weird if Sam’s the only one who ever eats, and she loves French fries and most other diner food.

After the waitress leaves, Ruby sets up the silverware and the miscellaneous table objects to make boundaries. Sam frowns at her, watching her check to make sure they’re all even. She grins at him.

“I learned this one on the internet,” she confides, almost excited. She taps the sugar packet and clarifies, “Sugar packet football. Like matchbook football, but with packets.”

Sam, as he does, looks confused. “You want to play… matchbook football.”

“Yeah. I figured, we need to find stuff to do. We end up on stakeouts and stuck in motels and whatever. We also need to get a deck of cards, but I think this could be fun while we wait for food.”

Sam doesn’t protest, so she explains the rules. Each party gets three flicks to get the packet across the table to hang over the edge without falling. If it falls short and falls over the edge, it changes hands. Upon scoring, the scorer gets to kick off to their opponent. If the packet moves at all, it counts as a flick. If the packet goes out of bounds (the boundaries set by condiments and silverware), it changes hands.

“Wait, where’s the field goal?” Sam asks, getting into the game despite himself.

Ruby shrugs. “The poster suggested we not do that one in public. It could result in getting in shouting with old people, apparently.”

So, Sam, a twenty-five year old man, and Ruby, a significantly older demon, play matchbook football with a sugar packet for ten minutes, even continuing after the waitress brings them their drinks and takes their orders. Sam is unsurprisingly better at it than Ruby. The final score, by the time their plates arrive with their steaming breakfast food (and French fries), is 10-6 in Sam’s favor.

“I’ll get you next time,” Ruby says around her mouth-full of fries.

Sam huffs a laugh, shaking his head as he digs into his omelette. While he’s looking down at his food, Ruby allows herself a second of affection. When it’s all over, he might hate her, or be too busy reaping his reward and living happily ever after with Dean—Hell, she might even be dead. But until then, Ruby’s only mission is to get him ready and keep him safe.

And so she does.

 

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me about ruby's sam-related redemption arc at rubyapologist.tumblr.com


End file.
